Jason did not, however, long enjoy his ill-gotten dignity; for, in 172 A. C., less than three years after he obtained the high-priesthood, he was supplanted by his younger brother Menelaus, who offered the king three hundred talents more for that dignity than Jason had given. The wickedness of Menelaus surpassed even that of his brother; for one of his first acts, after he assumed the duties of his office, was to abstract some golden vessels from the Temple, and send them secretly to Tyre for sale. The secret, however, transpired, and produced great excitement, particularly among the Jews of Antioch, who were both numerous and powerful. The exiled high-priest, the venerable Onias, especially, took such notice of the affair as to give great offense to Menelaus; and he, therefore, prevailed upon Andronicus, the king's deputy at Antioch, to put him to death.

Antiochus soon after engaged in a war with Egypt. He twice invaded that country with success; but the absence of his forces from Palestine, and a rumor of his death, encouraged the exiled Jason to attempt the recovery of his lost power. With a body of one thousand men, assisted by adherents within the city, he surprised Jerusalem, and treated with great severity the adherents of Menelaus, who himself sought refuge in the castle. The return of Antiochus from Egypt, however, compelled him to relinquish his power and abandon the city; and after wandering for some time from place to place, he at length miserably perished in Lacedæmonia.

Antiochus was so incensed at the satisfaction which the report of his death afforded the Jews, that he resolved to treat the affair as a revolt, and to punish it accordingly. With this view he abandoned Jerusalem to the fury of his soldiers for three days, during which four thousand of the inhabitants were put to death, and nearly an equal number

sold into slavery. The king, conducted by the impious Menelaus, then entered the Temple, and plundered it of all its treasures, vessels, and golden ornaments, carrying away with him eighteen hundred talents of gold and silver to Antioch. Farther to outrage the feelings of the Jews, and to insult their God, he sacrificed, before he left the city, a large hog upon the altar of burnt-offerings, and then left Menelaus in the high-priesthood.

The king of Egypt had, meantime, formed an alliance with the distant Romans; and when Antiochus, therefore, attempted another invasion of that country, he was met by the Roman ambassador, who, in the name of the Senate, commanded him to desist from his enterprise; and, drawing a circle around him in the sand, forbade him to step without it, until he had decided between the friendship and the enmity of Rome. The unprincipled tyrant was compelled to abandon his enterprise, and, burning with a sense of his disgrace, he failed not, on his return, to wreak his vengeance on the unoffending Jews. For this purpose he sent Apollonius, one of his generals, against Jerusalem, with an army of twenty-two thousand men, with strict orders to destroy the city, massacre the male inhabitants, and sell the women and children into slavery. Apollonius entered the city without opposition, and gave no indication of his intentions until the return of the Sabbath. On that sacred day, while the people were engaged in the solemn worship of the Most High, he executed his dreadful commission with unrelenting cruelty. After having slain great multitudes of the people, and sent away ten thousand into captivity, he plundered the city, then set it on fire, and demolished the walls. The Temple was permitted to stand, but its service was altogether abandoned; for it was commanded by a fortress which the Syrians erected, and from which the soldiers assaulted all who went there to wor

ship. Thus, on the ninth of June, 168 A. C., the daily sacrifices of the Temple ceased, and the city of Jerusalem was deserted.

Not satisfied with the severe punishment thus inflicted upon the Jews, Antiochus next issued a decree, that the Grecian idolatry should be established throughout his vast dominions. This decree had special reference to the Jews, and so rigidly was it enforced, that death was the penalty of disobedience. The Temple of Jerusalem was dedicated to Jupiter Olympius, his statue placed in the court, and sacrifices regularly offered to him. Such of the Jews as refused to share in this worship, or to evince their conform ity to it by eating swine's flesh, were cruelly massacred, or subjected to the most exquisite tortures. Notwithstanding these severities, Antiochus had the mortification to see that his decree was much less effective than he had anticipated; and he, therefore, issued another decree, forbidding, under pain of death, the worship of Jehovah, and the observances of the Sabbath and other distinctive requirements of the Mosaic law. He even went so far as to endeavor to extinguish the law itself, by forbidding it to be read, and commanding every copy to be given up under pain of death. Under these trying circumstances, many apostatised from the faith, but many more were found faithful unto death, while others went forth to wander in deserts and in mountains, in dens and in caves of the earth, subsisting on such herbs and roots as they could find in these solitary placss. It was on this occasion that the venerable Eleazer, though in the ninetieth year of his age, was put to the most excruciating tortures and death, for refusing to eat the forbidden swine's flesh.

The reading of the law by the Jews in their synagogues being forbidden by the last decree of Antiochus, they now began to read lessons from the prophets instead; and when

afterwards they resumed the reading of the law, they did not cease to read the prophets also; and from this circumstance arose the subsequent use, in their synagogues, of both the books of the law and those of the prophets. The synagogue itself originated with the Babylonian captivity, and the destruction of the Temple. The Jews, after they became settled in the land of their exile, without a Temple for Divine service, resolved, as a substitute, to erect particular buildings, in which they might be instructed in the law, and might worship the God of their fathers on the Sabbath day. These buildings, or synagogues, were always placed upon an elevated spot, sometimes within and some times without the city, and were similar in their construction and arrangements to our modern churches. They were soon found in every part of the country in which the exiles dwelt, and were so convenient that, after the Restoration, and the rebuilding of the Temple, they could not be dispensed with. In our Saviour's time, synagogues had become so numerous, that every town in Judæa had one or more of them: Tiberias, a city of Galilee, contained twelve of them; and in Jerusalem there were no lesthan four hundred and eighty.